‘The 50th Years of Dilemma and Conundrum’

O R ShallamMarch 9, 2022

Like the great saying goes ‘Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions’ and while in the state of Meghalaya the mother of all other professions is being looked down and victimized by the government for the interest of the people in power.

Teachers in our society are amongst the others from many that has been deprived and discriminated of all their basic rights by the Government even though they lay the most conceptual foundation in a society. From SSA teachers to College teachers, the government turned blind eyes and deaf ears to almost every part of the issues and grievances faced by them. Salaries, non-regularization of post and non-revision of all other basic incentives are amongst the urgent and topmost issues that need immediate attention by the government besides others.

A ready reference of such scene created and mitigated by the government that can be observed to the part time Lecturers of the Kiang Nangbah Government College, Jowai that was given a task to attend their duties to the morning shift of the college. For the last two to three years, the teachers of the morning section are being deprived of their salary rights of which was supposed to be reimburse to them by the government once in a year at that too at a limited and meager amount. These teachers too have families and children to feed and take care of besides other things that are required to attend. However, they are not getting paid for all the hard work, the dedication and the devotion in teaching the large numbers of students attending their classes daily. Mr Chief Minister and Mr. Education Minister, is there anything much worse than a teacher attending to his/her students in an empty stomach? How do you expect good academics results when our very own teachers are starving?

While it is a very bold move by the Government to accommodate maximum number of students in the college of which a first semester class itself would reflect a whooping number of 1200 Students alone, imagine the number of students of the morning section in a college with 6 (six) semester courses!!

This very college has recently got accredited by the University Grant Commission (UGC) as a Grade B college; doesn’t the morning section Lecturers also play an important role for such accreditation? How can they be treated as such?  

The Teachers of the morning section in the college delivers and impart education to the poor section of students who could not get a chance to study during the day time as they themselves have to attend to their works or day time jobs to sustain and support themselves and their families of which in turn, studying during the morning section is a blessing in disguise for such students to pursue their degree courses. The Teachers   however, besides struggling hard to impart quality and standard education and teaching to the students besides attending to other assignments and exams preparation, these very teachers are being punished by the government for being responsible and dedicated to their duties and responsibilities. It is very desirable for any government to promote growth and development in its course of action, but compromising the very basic right of teachers? Is that even supposed to happen?  This Government has achieved stuff beyond possibilities in creating issues and victimizing the powerless section of the society. Jaintia hills in particular has faced drastic chaos and tantrums from this government, be it garbage drama to coal trafficking, you name it, we got it!!

Ironically, the Education Minister himself hails from Jaintia hills, his lack of closeness towards his region distant himself from attending to the very problems and issues knocking at his door. Mr, Chief Minister and Mr. Education Minister, Is it that Teachers starvation is also a part of your 300 projects for the 50th statehood celebration? If not, kindly and immediately address this issue, just because some section of the society does not have the power to raise their voices, it does not mean that will give you all the rights to discriminate and deprived them of their salary and paychecks. These teachers need to feed themselves too before they feed all the knowledge of the world to our students.